Reviews Around The Web

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

"I'm rather glad ASUS stuck with the Rampage Extreme branding as it lets me say stuff like EEEEXXXXTRRREEEEMMMMMEEE in daily conversation. I know in just writing this article I've mumbled that to myself a half-dozen times with a grin on my face. I have a feeling the Rampage III Extreme will be another board that goes down in the history books for high performance. The ASUS R3E motherboard though won't be limited in appreciation to just those people who benchmark with liquid nitrogen and dry ice. A lot of thought was put into the layout and the fact that it has an ATX form factor height means it'll enable 4-way CrossFire in a normal ATX case unlike the EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI which fits in only a handful of cases.

"ASUS' M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 motherboard is built around the 55nm AMD 890GX and SB850 southbridge. It features 128MB of onboard DDR3-1333 Sideport memory for the integrated DX10.1 ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics. Its AM3 CPU socket will accommodate AMD Phenom II and Athlon II processors, right through to the six-core Phenom II X6 (code name 'Thuban'/140W CPU)."

The term "3D" has been used quite a bit over the past couple of months, and as it stands today, there's a fair bit of content available to those with capable hardware. But on the mobile side of things, support is just beginning to creep in. The first available option was from ASUS, with its G51J 3D, and we're taking a look at it here.

Friday, February 26, 2010

"The P7H57D-V EVO motherboard is another fine example of great engineering from the gang at ASUS. Everything from the box and bundle to the TurboV EVO overclocking software exudes quality. The board is extremely stable even when pushed to the limits and has an overwhelming feature list, which include SATA 6G and USB 3.0. Aside from SATA and USB, performance between motherboards these days is largely the same, with results being within the specific tests margin of error. The biggest differences are the features and quality of components, which typically shows up when it comes to overclocking. We found that the P7H57D-V EVO was an excellent overclocking motherboard, reaching the same clocks of the much more expensive P55 based ASUS P7P55D Premium..."

"The Asus EAH5870 arrived Technic3D. Technic3D will check the HD5870 in the following Review with a Resolution from 2560x1600, 1920x1200, 1680x1050, the real Power Consumption and many more in Games, against other Graphic Cards. Better with Voltage Tweak?"

On todays testbench is a Asus 5750 videocard, this is a 140$ card that seems to really bring some bang for the buck performance wise according to the specifications. We are going to compare it vs some higher performance cards that we have looked at before; and also try to boost performance with some overclocking.

Today we have with us the ASUS EAH 5830 DirectCu 1024 MB, a premium non-reference implementation of the Radeon HD 5830. The way its cooler is designed, and going by ASUS' choice of components, the EAH 5830 DirectCu is catered to the value performance enthusiast who can squeeze the last ounce of performance out of it by overclocking.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The recent switch from analog to digital television was mainly driven by the benefits of digital technology over its analog predecessor. Though digital television has become ubiquitous the conversion cannot be instantaneous, nor will analog technology simply vanish. During this transitional period of converting analog infrastructures into a digital foundation, hybrid devices like the My Cinema PHC3-150 Combo TV-Tuner Card will be essential. These hybrid devices work with both signal types allowing for a smoother transition. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of the PHC3-150. Even if you've already made the transition to digital systems you may want to check out some tricks to extract even more utility from the hybrid features of this card.

With the Maximus III Gene Asus presents a P55 based mATX board
which might be in a class of its own. Lots of features on a very small
area that's the concept with which ASUS is trying to convince its
customers. If the succeed that's what we'll show you on the following
pages.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

?ASUS typically brings some unique features to the table with their graphics cards, and even at a lower price range the EAH5670 1GB is no exception. A few interesting software utilities, along with a custom heatsink, make this budget gaming card a rather attractive package. Let's take a closer look and see what ASUS brings to the table here to satisfy your gaming interests.?

ASUS has been a longtime partner to Intel, and both companies have been made better because of their relationship. But when it comes to new technology, sometimes Intel takes a little too long to implement change while ASUS prefers to offer their faithful consumers the options right away. Intel's tick-tock plan doesn't coincide with the technical improvements made to areas outside of processor development, such as SuperSpeed USB-3.0 or Revision 3.x SATA 6.0-Gbps (aka SATA-III) controllers. Most hardware enthusiasts agree that it's awkward to see Intel's "Enthusiast" branded X58-Express chipset paired to older standards while "Mainstream" P55 motherboards enjoy the better and faster new ones. ASUS feels the same way, and now offers their P6X58D-Premium motherboard to forward-thinking enthusiasts who might not want to wait for the launch of Intel's X68-Express platform. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests several X58-based ! motherboard against the ASUS P6X58D-Premium in heat-to-head graphics, processor, memory, and SSD storage performance.

?When it comes to choosing an optical drive sometimes it can be hard. A lot of people just choose the cheapest drive, but that is not always the best route. Today we will be looking at a new combo drive from ASUS that allows for Blu-ray playback and DVD/CD burning. It also has some really cool features like being able to encrypt your burnt discs with 128-bit encryption, True Theater High Definition which boosts DVD playback quality and Optimal Tuning Strategy which will perform a test before really burning a disc to generate an optimal burning strategy for the best burning quality. Let?s see if t he BC-08B1ST Blu-ray Combo Drive is right for you."

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

"While the Eee PC 1201N was not designed to be the leader in battery life, we were still impressed to see it surpassed the battery life performance of the ASUS N10Jc with the NVIDIA 9300m graphics. We expected the 1201N to perform similarly, but the result was an extra coveted hour of battery life both in idle and DVD playback tests. The only benefit the N10Jc had over the Eee PC 1201N was the ability to turn off the NVIDIA 9300m and just use the Intel integrated graphics in order to conserve battery life. As many may recall, NVIDIA recently announced an answer to this issue for ION2 by incorporating their Optimus technology into the new platform in order to allow the longest battery life possible while still having the discrete graphics when you need them. We look forward to this technology entering the netbook arena!"

Thursday, February 11, 2010

"The ASUS Eee PC 1005PE is based on the same external design and features as our previous favored Eee PC, the 1005HA. While the external shell is nearly identical, what lies under the hood is a whole new platform from the improved power consumption of the Intel Atom N450 CPU and slightly improved graphics with the Intel GMA 3150 integrated GPU. When we began testing the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE, we quickly realized the new Pineview Intel Atom processors and platform were all about further reducing power consumption in order to continue to increase battery life. We were impressed to see the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE was able to meet the same battery life duration as the ASUS UL80Vt notebook which featured an Intel CULV SU7300 processor..."

?All of these changes in processor and chipset design, along with Intel?s new 32nm manufacture process, opened the door for their latest and most radical change yet?placing the VGA on the processor. Yes, Intel?s new 2010 Core i5 600 series processors have on-die graphics processing. Of course to accommodate this, Intel has released a new motherboard chipset, the H55 Express. Sporting the same LGA 1156 socket as the P55, this new design has monitor ports in the I/O panel. So far I?ve seen 20 H55 motherboards for sale at my favorite online retailer. Of these 20 boards, 19 are mAT X boards, including the motherboard I am looking at today, the Asus P7H55D-M EVO. Sporting Asus? EVO cosmetics and onboard extras, this motherboard also natively supports the new ?Superspeed? USB 3.0. Read on to check out the Asus P7H55D-M EVO!"